November 23, 2012

Nov 23, 2012 | Fukushima Accident Updates

  • Tokyo’s gubernatorial race has split into two camps over the nuclear issue. Three parties back Kenji Utsunomiya who has pledged to phase out all nuclear energy. Four other parties support Vice Governor Naoki Inose who says it is premature to make specific policy commitments. The DPJ, which currently controls the Diet, has not backed either candidate, while the LDP has thrown in with Vice Governor Inose. This union of political parties in Japan is uncommon. Toshiaki Eto, a professor at Gakuin University, said, “It is a significant move in which political parties go beyond ideological differences to get together and cooperate on important policies. Energy policy has been an important policy issue for elections since the Great East Japan Earthquake. Conversely, it could become a message from the Tokyo gubernatorial election to the House of Representative election that ‘the nuclear issue is important.'” Then again, it might not. (Mainichi Shimbun)
  • On May 14, 2011, the Hamaoka nuclear unit #5 had a major seawater leak while it was shutting down due to Naoto Kan’s worst-case-earthquake-based mandate. The leak was inside the steam condenser on the exhaust of the turbines. During power operation, the operating systems would have sealed off the leak before it ever reached the reactor pressure vessel (RPV). At the stage of shutdown when the leak occurred, the cooling water flow from the condenser into the RPV was high, which is normal for the process of reaching cold shutdown for plant. It is estimated that 5 tons of the freshwater/seawater mixture from the condenser reached the RPV itself before the inflow was stopped. RPVs normally contain water so pure that it barely conducts electricity and the rate of corrosion is vanishingly small. However, the brine content of the water which leaked into the RPV necessarily accelerated corrosion beyond design specifications. While most of the major damage was to the condenser and its attached technologies, the impact on the RPV has taken center stage. The former nuclear watch-dog, NISA, monitored the plant staff’s remediation efforts for the RPV endorsed the work as “appropriate”. Now, one of the former-NISA investigative staff has gone to the Press with a minority opinion, “Exhaustive checks and replacement of key components should be considered,” on all unit #5 components…in addition to those already studied and remediated. NRA commissioner Toyoshi Fuketa, who served on the NISA investigative team, said, “Reuse and restart cannot be contemplated without confirming the potential consequences of major disasters involving coolant loss, on a case-by-case basis.” (Asahi Shimbun)
  • The local government in Shimane Prefecture has completed emergency plans for the 30km radius around Shimane nuclear station. The plans account for the nearly 400,000 people who live in the emergency planning zone. This includes the capital, Matsue City. Evacuees would be sent to neighboring prefectures that have formally consented to be part of the plans. Shimane’s government began emergency planning actions soon after the Fukushima accident and now has the first EPZ to finish the job mandated by the NRA. (Kyodo News Service)
  • Higher than anticipated radiation levels make the news when discovered by Japanese citizens, even as far away as Taiwan. Oberlin University professor Katsumi Nakao and Tokyo Metropolitan University professor Yo Kato discovered a “hot spot” near a health clinic on Taiwan’s Orchard Island. They say a person would receive a yearly limit on exposure in just 10 hours. They cannot rule out the possibility the reading is connected to with a nearby nuclear storage facility. Lin Chia-lung of Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party says the government should immediately provide health check-ups for everyone on the island. However, Taiwan’s Atomic Energy Council says the readings are faulty because the Japanese professors were using monitoring devices subject to microwaves coming from a nearby tower. Nakao and Kato found high levels earlier this year near an elementary school on the island which was also near a microwave tower. (Japan Times)
  • Recent papers published in the United States have allegedly “proved” that natural background radiation (BKG) causes cancer. It seems that similar contentions recur every decade. Back in 1980, Professor Jerry. J. Cohen of prestigious Lawrence Livermore Laboratories published a detailed rebuttal to such claims. He pointed out that if these allegations are correct, then we must conclude that more than half of the cancer incidence in the world is due to BKG, which is absurd. Check it out… http://www.irpa.net/irpa5/cdrom/VOL.2/J2_76.PDF